AcousticallyChallenged

Well, that's where the wind comes in. We don't have to pay for that.

Specialist firms mean £££. When the technology is off-the-shelf, and we truly are at the stage where you can ship it over, plug it in, and ship it back, then it's a very different proposition. At present, it's all hypothetical or experimental. Maybe in a decade, it'll be where it needs to be. But, that should be a long term plan. Get people warmed up to the idea.

They've been pushing them for years. On paper, it's a cracking idea, you've got something shipping container sized putting out a huge amount of safe, clean power. But of the few in operation, the floating Russian design needs enriched uranium, which comes with obvious problems. There's a Chinese one that looks promising, but it's only been deployed as a small regular looking power station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor But, it would be years off, even if we started now. The turbines would pay for themselves in that period, and could always come down after that.

But, it'd keep turning turning turning

Where do we get the fuel from? I don't think we have any uranium mines. How do we transport the fuel? Do we have anything certified for transporting it? Remember, it's notoriously heavy. How do we dispose of the waste? See above. How do we deal with the perceived proliferation risk? We'd need an equivalent to the UK's nuclear constabulary. Sellafield isn't the answer. They've had issues for decades with contamination, crumbling infrastructure and more. I'm very much for nuclear power, but, it isn't a simple, or cheap, thing.

Well, bar the oil and gas supplied by the UK. Which leaves us with Sulby and the energy-from-waste plant. But, the energy from waste plant also uses oil as part of its operation. So that takes us down to Sulby, which can kick out 1.2 megawatts at full whack.

Do the costs work out if you go that route? Distributing it means more wiring, more control gear etc. You need to be able to switch generation on and off to maintain the grid's balance. More maintenance too, both for the turbines themselves, and the supporting infrastructure. Big turbines concentrate a lot of that effort into one area.

What about the invisible poisoning of the Manx countryside and that worldwide from noxious emissions? Is spoiling a view the greater evil?

I remember reading the report, and it praised the spares they kept on hand for the Ben too. Equally, you can't really blame them, the Ben being laid up for lack of a part would be moaned about endlessly. I think the most annoying part is that the Liverpool boat gets in after the last bus now, so you're stuffed without transport.

Getting parts for anything is an ongoing nightmare. Magic of just-in-time supply chains trying to catch back up.

So, what is broken on Manannan? All sailings approx 45 mins longer now, and it seems it'll be that way for a while. I remember in the report that Tynwald had when buying the SPCo, it claimed they had all sorts of spares available, above and beyond what you'd need or expect.

What if they use up all the wind? How will the yachts sail?

The Ryzen was just picked as a reasonably good x86 CPU in higher-end laptops. I utterly agree about the feel and usability of high-end vs cheap laptops. If you're buying an older laptop, buying something that was expensive for the first owner often gets you a better deal down the line. But, it isn't just Macs. Thinkpads for example, are another. Though, for performance, If we want to go for Intel, try the i7-13700H. That's in laptops that are commensurate with Apple build quality etc. | Macbook i7-3630QM | Intel i7-13700H | Single Core: 1892 3692 Multicore: 5666 28718 So, single-core performance is just about doubled. Multi-core performance is astonishingly better, and would need 5 and a half of the older macbooks to match. The tray price for the 3630QM was $378, and Intel list the new i7 as $500, so given inflation, pricing isn't a million miles out either. As a matter of interest, the M2 processor has better single core performance than the newer i7, but fewer cores overall.

They've only just gotten a much bigger boat. It's inevitable that it'll take a little while to get into the swing of things. On paper, they could be loading hundreds more passengers in the process, and significantly more vehicles too.

You absolutely want to get it right. I'd be the same with something I'd spent 800 quid on, let alone 80 million. Engineering says something is amiss and they need 10 minutes? They can have it. Want to get the hang of it before trying it in more difficult conditions with grumbling passengers? Have at it. Most people wouldn't be grumbling about pilots spending time training in a new plane...

That's not really true mind you. It has just been incremental. A 10% increase between two years does however start to add up. A 2012 Macbook Pro or similar will have something like an Ivybridge i7. The 13" model you picture is a dual core one at that. So an i7-3520m. If you compare that with a modern laptop CPU, of about equivalent price now, so say, the AMD Ryzen 5850U, which can be had in laptops costing less than that MBP did new. It's not a top-end one either, but it's reasonably high end. Ghz aren't the only metric of useful work now. If you take benchmark scores from Passmark: The Macbook has 2 cores, each getting 1734 points per core, with a multi-core score of 2862. The Ryzen 5850U gets 3036 points per core. But it has another 6 of them compared to the Macbook. So a total score of 17316. Only an approximately 500% increase in processing power. Granted, versus the 2009's 972 for the Core 2 Duo, you're still on a notable improvement. But, if you compare gigahertz, a 3.1ghz i7 does appear initially faster than a 1.9ghz Ryzen. The Ryzen also uses less than half the electricity to do the work (15w vs 35w), which nets you a much longer battery life, whilst offering onboard graphics that simply don't compare. The story with the M1 is similar, but the M1 really benefits from vertical integration. For years, Apple insisted that developers used their interfaces for things like graphics and certain types of computation. When they designed the M1 with hardware tailored towards that, it meant that existing programs benefitted from it immediately. Equally, often an older, high-end machine is a better experience all around than the cheapest new ones. You often end up with a much nicer display, better build quality and better keyboard.

Intel nearly stopped doing socketed desktop CPUs years ago. Most laptops aren't upgradable meaningfully now. The CPUs are often soldered, even a ThinkPad will often have at least some of the RAM soldered.

Yeah, that's exactly how I understood it to work too. https://www.wartsila.com/marine/products/ship-electrification-solutions/hybrid-solutions It looks like the system offers a lot of flexibility in how it's used, and what it replaces. In theory, it looks really promising, though that's based on their marketing materials. An engine that's always run in 'ideal' scenarios is bound to fare better.

The real problem are the folks who have a single speed setting. They won’t dare go over 40, but seldom go under it either. A few points for those would hopefully knock some sense in.

It’s meant to shut the engine off isn’t it? It’s a hybrid. I’d guess that the pilot suggestion is likely on the money.

Then, cite peer-reviewed journal papers. If there aren't any, some will claim it's a cover-up, others would say those papers don't pass scientific muster. Actually, it sums up the people who are convinced that some sort of electronic implant could be fit into the needle for the COVID jab. The real ones are much bigger. You'd certainly not miss it going in.

Depends on the person. Some people will be very reasonable and if it's pointed out to them, they will actually try and resolve it. If they tell you to fuck off and chin you, well, you might've resolved the problem anyway if they get themselves in trouble for it.

Could they not just prop it on the ventilation system in Tynwald? Lots of hot air being thrown out there.

What really concerns me is that local authorities are being asked where they don't have a problem. But, the exodus of vehicles from restricted areas would just concentrate the problem further

If they actually enforced a lack of tax in any reasonable way, rather than just a few sabre rattling events here and there, you'd resolve part of the problem. Suddenly it gets expensive to have your shed, as it needs to be insured and taxed, and people are getting pulled up for it. What really needs to happen is a way for dealing with nuisance vehicles, or, just actually dealing with them. There's often existing rules or legislation that do apply, and just don't get widely applied. . You could, theoretically nab a lot of these vehicles on the lighting laws too. You have to have your parking lights on at night per the highway code. I've seen it happen across in places where parking was causing a nuisance. A bunch of valid fixed penalty notices and half the problem disappeared.